prolog

Part 1 - The Shift in Immersion - The Structure of Mindful Distraction
Chapter 1.
Changes in Engagement (Changes in Employee Engagement - From 'Emotional Engagement' to 'Maintaining Engagement')
Chapter 2.
Definition and Theoretical Background of Organizational Commitment
Chapter 3.
How does immersion change when fairness breaks down?
Chapter 4.
Theory and Four Dimensions of Organizational Justice
Chapter 5.
What fairness do employees value most?
Chapter 6.
How does fairness change immersion?
Chapter 7.
Psychological pathways of immersion dissolution
Chapter 8.
The emotional end of sustained immersion, psychological resignation

Part 2 - Restoring Immersion - Can Structure Restore Emotion?
Chapter 9.
Engagement Recovery Strategies Following Violations of Organizational Justice: From Emotions to Structure
Chapter 10.
Why did we choose that strategy?

Part 3 - Can Servant Leadership Be the Seed of Recovery?
Chapter 11.
Restorative Leadership: Why Servant Leadership?
Chapter 12.
Servant leaders around us
Chapter 13.
Leadership in recovery begins with practice.

Chapter 14.
Servant Leadership Self-Assessment and Reality Check
Chapter 15.
Beyond Culture to Structure: Institutionalizing Servant Leadership

Part 4 - Can Work Contain Emotions? - Strategies for Job Crafting
Chapter 16.
After emotional recovery
Chapter 17.
Can things change?
Chapter 18.
How does Job Crafting work?
Chapter 19.
Restoration of identity and meaning
Chapter 20.
How does work become institutionalized?
Chapter 21.
Job Crafters around us

Part 5 - It's Not a Condition, It's a Relationship - I-Deals and the Psychology of Negotiation
Chapter 22.
It's a relationship, not a condition
Chapter 23.
Negotiation is about relationships, not conditions.
Chapter 24.
I-deals, the language of possibility
Chapter 25.
I-dealers around us

Part 6 - After Recovery, a Life of Practice
Chapter 26.
What will change here and now?

Epilogue

The background and issues surrounding the book's creation

Having worked in organizations for many years, the author has repeatedly witnessed moments when employee engagement shifts.
Employees' perspectives changed as they experienced being passed over for promotion despite achieving success in projects, being evaluated without even being given an explanation, and facing repeated unfair decision-making.
The initial passion and affection cooled, and soon a resignation that “there is no more meaning to be found here” took hold.
What struck the author most was that this change was not simply discontent or temporary cynicism.
It was a transition that led to the loss of emotional immersion, the severing of relationships and even identity, and the result was the invisible crisis of maintenance immersion.

However, this important phenomenon has not been sufficiently addressed, both academically and practically, to date.
The author explores this head-on, drawing on research in organizational psychology, leadership, and job design to explore how engagement changes and how it can be restored.

Content characteristics and significance of the book

The Inconvenient Truth: Immersion Changes
Based on four theories of organizational justice—distributive, procedural, interactional, and restorative justice—this book explains how unfair experiences impact employees' emotions and perceptions, and how their engagement undergoes gradual changes as a result.
Based on the affective events theory of Weiss & Cropanzano (1996) and the self-determination theory of Deci & Ryan (1985), we analyze unfair cases occurring in actual organizational settings: failure to promote, opaque evaluations, and repeated unreasonable decision-making.
This specifically reveals the psychological path through which emotional immersion transforms into normative immersion, then into maintenance immersion, and finally to psychological resignation.
Readers come to understand immersion not as a 'fixed tendency', but as a changeable and resilient psychological state that can be broken down and rebuilt depending on circumstances and experiences.

A message of hope: "Recovery is possible."
The author suggests servant leadership, job crafting, and individualized work conditions (I-deals) as specific strategies for immersion recovery.
Each strategy is also connected to Bandura's (1977) social learning theory, Bakker & Demerouti's (2007) JD-R model, Rousseau's (1995) and Morrison & Robinson's (1997) psychological contract theory, and Blau's (1964) social exchange theory.
Above all, this book secures reliability and validity by broadly reflecting the empirical research results of numerous researchers at home and abroad.
Therefore, the proposed solution goes beyond the author's personal insight and can be considered a collection of knowledge accumulated by the research community.
As a result, this book becomes a practical recovery guide that can be utilized by leaders, HR managers, and frontline workers alike, without losing academic depth.

A more lethal threat than freeriders: sustaining immersion
These days are an era of hyper-competition.
Amidst technological innovation, automation, and overwhelming performance pressures, organizations fight for survival every day.
While countless strategies are being developed to secure a sustainable competitive advantage, ultimately, it is people and their engagement that determines success or failure.
But when immersion breaks down, organizations only point to the most glaring problems without seeing the true nature of the problem.


“People who only want to share the results without doing the work properly.”
I'm used to it.
These are the free riders, commonly known as free riders.
Free riders are not immersed in the first place and try to get rewards with minimal effort.
As collective action theory (Olson, 1965) and social loafing research (Latane et al., 1979) explain, they are highly visible and controllable through institutions.
But the real threat is invisible.

People who keep their place on the outside, but whose hearts and identities have already left - these are the Continuance Commitment.
These are people who were once passionately dedicated, but lost their commitment after repeated experiences of unfairness and a breakdown in trust.
As Becker's (1960) 'side-bet theory' and Meyer & Allen's (1991) immersion study point out, they cannot leave because they are afraid of losing.
While outwardly they appear sincere, inwardly they experience psychological resignation and identity alienation, which erode the organization's creativity, innovation, and commitment over the long term.

Freeriders cause short-term performance degradation, but it is easily revealed.
Conversely, those who maintain immersion appear normal on the outside while destroying the organizational culture in the long run.
So it's much more lethal.
If freeriders are the result of institutional loopholes, then retention immersion is the shadow of leadership and cultural failures.
Drawing on numerous studies and real-world examples, this book traces the psychological pathways through which immersion transitions from affective and normative to sustained immersion.
And it suggests a way to restore emotions, identity, and systems through specific strategies such as servant leadership, job crafting, and I-deals.

This book is not just a simple HR guide.
This is a must-read risk manual for executives, C-level executives, and HR managers responsible for the organization.
More than visible free-riding, it is invisible maintenance commitment that is the real threat that is eating away at an organization's future.
“Free riders undermine performance, but maintenance enthusiasts destroy the future of the organization.”

"The Two Faces of Sustainable Immersion Unknown to Organizations" - Excerpt from the text